Karma and the Wellington Lake Ducky Family

Since my “brakes” experience kind of overshadowed my Wellington Lake canoeing, I didn’t get to share my favorite moment from GC with you.

The afternoon of the second day, just after dinner, I was down at the waterfront with a about 10 of the 12 year olds. They were having fun skipping (or at least trying to skip) rocks. Just near our beach there was a kind of cove where a mama duck and 8 of the cutest ducklings EVER were living. Okay, so all ducklings are the cutest EVER.

As the ducks were swimming back to their cove, one of the 12 year olds started THROWING HUGE rocks at the mama and her babies! I told the girl to stop about 5 times before she just turned around and laughed at me and kept throwing! After about another 10 times of yelling at her, I finally got a hold of her and told her to stop and not to even THINK about doing it again. Seriously, what kind of person thinks it is funny to terrorize baby ducks!!!!!!!

Well, about 5 minutes later, this same girl had gotten a hold of a fake fishing pole and had waded out a little ways and was pretending to fish. One of the other first year girls, continued to skip rocks. Well, one of the rocks “slipped” out and totally PEGGED the “rock throwing, duck torturing girl” in the hand. She was crying and left a big bruise and welt. I took her up to the nurse who gave her ice.

It took ALL the compassion and humility I have ever had to not turn to the crying 12 year old and say, “Karma is a bi*** ain’t it.”

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The Answer

The song is the theme song from the A&E version of Pride and Prejudice; the 6 hour versions that is the BEST ever 6 hours in front of the TV you can spend.

I am working on another Name That Tune for this weekend. It will be a totally different genre.

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Linnea's Virtual Recital and Name That Tune Game

The clip is super short so it isn't huge or anything. No hints.

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The Top 10 Things That Have Changed About Me in My Old Age

1. I no longer kill spiders, unless they are in my bed.
2. I have no untamable itch to travel
3. I finally appreciate the art of being “domestic”. (I still can’t do most of it though)
4. Most of the pictures on my wall are hung in frames and with nails, not sticky tack, tape, and lamination
5. I enjoy practicing the piano.
6. I LOVE genealogy (someday I will have to post the amazing story behind this.)
7. The jewelry I wear isn’t ALL made of leather, rocks, Tabasco sauce bottles, boot laces, and weird metal shapes.
8. I actually use my crock pot for crock pot cooking.
9. I pretty much only watch movies that evoke emotions other than fear.
10. When I have kids, I have no desire to name them weird names.

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The Top 10 Things That Haven't Changed About Me In My Old Age

1. My favorite color has not changed (how many of you can name it?)
2. I still joke about serving Lucky Charms out of my crock pot.
3. I still spend a nice amount of time trying to track down people that have been dear to me at some point in my life.
4. I still enjoy canoeing, basketball, camping, and game nights.
5. I do not enjoy summertime. Give me Fall or Spring or Winter, but please…take summer and give it to the people that love it.
6. I don’t have kids.
7. I still have lots of creativity, but no artistic talent AT ALL!
8. I still can’t get up until the last possible minute before I have to leave. I will never be the person who gets up early, runs, reads the paper, has breakfast on the patio, and then gets ready for the day.
9. I still enjoy a good laugh and try to keep people around that amuse me, and that I can amuse.
10. I still get acne…when does that go away…SEROIUSLY!!!

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Virtual Recital

During the summer I have LOADS of free time, even though I work full time. Lately I have been buying lots of new piano music. I am enjoying learning most of it. However, I find that I need real motivation to learn them properly. Thus, I am instituting a virtual recital. I am going to learn a piece and then record it and post it. That way I also have some reason to learn a piece well. It will also be a game of "name that tune". I won't post the title, and we will see who can name it first. I will post the piece before next Sunday night.

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Brakes

I was all ready to write a nice little editorial about my one day spent teaching canoeing up at Wellington Lake this week. But, it turns out I had a traumatic experience on my way home that trumped the serene wonderfulness that was my day up there.

On my way home from Wellington Lake the brakes in my car went out, as in…no breaks as I drove the 45 miles down the mountain. Instead of pulling over and doing the sensible thing of calling for a tow truck and getting a lift home, I kept going….in second gear up the hills and first gear down the mountains. It worked out well, and I made it home. I didn’t even need to use the emergency break. I think this experience will not go on my list of brave things done…more like…the STUPIDEST thing I have ever done that worked out okay in the end.

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Why I Won't Run on Bear Creek Trail

I told this story to a friend yesterday, and I thought it might make a good blog story. It is PG-13, so don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Have you ever run or biked on the Bear Creek trail? It really doesn't matter, but if you have, you can picture this much better. There is a portion of it that is pretty thick foliage on either side for about .5 mile. So thick, you can only kinda see the creek, even though it is maybe 10 feet away. This was my preferred trail. It isn't overly flat, and isn't overly hilly as well, plus it is super pretty and there are just enough people on it to not feel like you are in the middle of no where, but not crowded. One evening about 20 minutes to dusk or so, I found myself on the normal path. About 2.5 miles into the trail, I passed a mid 20s guy wearing super white spandex running the opposite direction. About 3 minutes later I hit my turnaround point and started back. As I came around the corner where I had passed him before, I saw him about 50 meters ahead standing looking at the creek. As I got closer I could tell something wasn't right. I immediately thought, "Ooops…I caught him peeing.” As I got closer he turned around to face me… Turns out he wasn't peeing after all and I came pretty close to getting "squirted", if you know what I mean…as in …I am glad I picked up my pace and he didn't aim better. Now I can laugh about it, but it scared the crap out of me and still makes me want to puke. I haven’t been on that part of the trail since. You can’t make this stuff up I tell you.

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How Economical is My Scooter?

Lately people have been asking me about how economical my scooter is. Here are some pretty solid numbers about my scooter. I have put 7000 miles on the scooter since I bought it in July of 2006. Here are the calculations. I use $3 because that is the average of what I paid for a gallon of gas sometimes $2, sometimes $4.

My scooter gets 100 MPG:

7000 Miles
100 MPG = 70 Gallons
$3.00 * 70
________________
Cost… $210


If your car gets 25 MPG:

The same 7000 Miles
25 MPG = 280 Gallons of Gas
$3.00 * 280
____________________
Cost... $840


Also, in Colorado, a 49cc scooter does not require a motorcycle license or insurance. The registration is $7 for 3 years.

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